Drawing Blood from a Stone-Faced Liar

Elizabeth Holmes

I was confused, flustered, shaken up, and mad at Joe after seeing the year’s most talked-about film, You Can See Everything, last Sunday. It is an ostensible documentary about disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.

Holmes was CEO of that company, which fraudulently claimed to have developed technology enabling a machine, the Edison, to run a vast array of tests from a single drop of blood. Blood is a fitting metaphor for the epistemological quest at the center of this film; trying to get the truth from Holmes feels like drawing blood from a stone.

Joe, maddeningly, emerged from this dizzying experience claiming he understood what he had just seen. He saw black-and-white where I saw only gray.

I admit I dozed for a snippet of the film’s three-hour running time, but a brief slumber is understandable, if not entirely justified, given the “over and over again” nature and almost incantatory rhythm of the inquisition between satirist and “documentarian” Nathan Fielder and his subject, Holmes, as she approaches jail time for her business crimes. It felt like I was being hypnotized.

When I came to, I wanted to scream. The psychological duel between Holmes and Fielder pushed me to the brink of insanity. 

It would be nearly impossible for me to spoil You Can See Everything for you if you haven’t already seen it. I will say it turns out to be about many things beyond its purported subject: the nature of truth, the performative, acting versus reality, reputation and redemption, and who the joke is on.

Go see this damn thing, try not to doze off, and come talk to me about it.

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